Double Trouble: Counting the Cost of Jephthah I. 40 x 2 In a paper published in 1980, J. Alberto Soggin lamented: “Despite forty years of research by leading exegetes, the problem of what the minor judges represent remains unsolved.”1 Today, nigh on forty years later, the reality is substantially the same. In those eight decades, consideration of the question has been shaped largely by the perspectives of Albrecht Alt and his student, Martin Noth. Alt found in the minor judges an authenticity of historical record which he considered to be lacking in the accounts of the major judges. The chief basis for his conclusion was that their respective periods of office are given not in rounded figures, as in the case of the major judges, but in numbers that possess a “completely unartificial appearance.”2 Noth developed Alt’s arguments to claim that the key to understanding the role of the minor judges in Settlement-era Israel and their relationship with the major judges is furnished in the portrayal of Jephthah who combines features of both. Alone among the charismatic military leaders, he was also a minor judge.3 Given the influence which Noth’s conclusions have exercised on successive generations of scholars,4 it is worth quoting his supporting arguments: 1 “Das Amt der ‘kleinen Richter’ in Israel,” VT 30 (1980): 245-8 (246). 2 Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (trans. R.A. Wilson; Oxford: Blackwell, 1966), 102. 3 The History of Israel (2nd edn; London: SCM Press, 1960), 101-2. 4 E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., “‘The ‘Minor Judges’: Some Literary and Historical Considerations,” CBQ 44 (1982): 185-201 (186). This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by The Society of Biblical Literature in The Journal of Biblical Literature, available online at https://doi.org/10.1353/jbl.2018.0003. It is not the copy of record. Copyright © 2018, Society of Biblical Literature. It is very conspicuous that Dtr. finishes his account of Jephthah not as he usually does, by saying that there were forty years of “rest” after the victory of the hero concerned, but with details that follow the system used in the list of “(minor) judges”: a statement concerning his six-year period of office, then the report of his death and place of burial. To this Dtr. attaches statements about three other “judges” who succeeded one another and came immediately after Jephthah. Given Jephthah’s presence in both traditions, it is easy to account for the arrangement of material in Judges. The “minor judges” come immediately before and after the Jephthah story: Judg. 10-12 is obviously based on the stories of “minor judges” as Dtr. knew it.5 Noth states that the Jephthah narrative would resemble the descriptions of the minor judges more closely had it not been “excessively swelled” by the material dealing with his heroic feats or, as Hartmut Rösel puts it more graphically, if this material had not “ripped apart” the minor judge sequence.6 Several commentators do not accept the sharp dichotomy that Noth perceived between the major and minor judges. Nevertheless, there has been broad support for his thesis that Jephthah provides the single common denominator between the heroic figures and the standardized list of individuals found in Judg 10:1-5; 12:8-15, and, therefore, uniquely elucidates the role of the judge, major and minor, in the book.7 This assessment is over-optimistic, however, since despite the extensive 5 The Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: JSOT, 1981), 43. 6 “Jephtah und das Problem der Richter,” Biblica 61 (1980): 251-55 (251-2). 7 For example: Biblisch-historisches Handwörterbuch 2 (ed. Bo Reicke and L. Rost; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), 810; Wolfgang Richter, “Die Überlieferungen um Jephtah: Ri 10,17 – 12,6,” Biblica 47 (1966): 485-556 (555); Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg, Die Bücher Josua, Richter, Ruth (4th edn, ATD 9; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 209, 218; Alan J. Hauser, “The ‘Minor Judges’: A Re-Evaluation,” JBL 94 (1975): 190-200 (190 n. 4, 193, 200); Roland de Vaux, The Early History of Israel, 2 vols (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by The Society of Biblical Literature in The Journal of Biblical Literature, available online at https://doi.org/10.1353/jbl.2018.0003. It is not the copy of record. Copyright © 2018, Society of Biblical Literature. record of Jephthah’s background, attitudes, and behaviour supplied in the composition, in reality, his story leaves us scarcely the wiser regarding the concrete role of “judge.” In summary, Noth’s arguments for Jephthah’s membership of the minor judge group are that the “forty years of rest” formula is absent, the period of his tenure as judge is stated, and his death and place of burial are recorded. All these points, however, apply also to Samson, Jephthah’s successor as a judge-deliverer. Moreover, whereas, in contrast to the minor judges, Jephthah’s place of burial is unspecified – “he was buried in the cities of Gilead” (12:7) – the writer makes a point of being precise in Samson’s obituary: “they buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father; and he judged Israel for twenty years” (16:31). What distinguishes Samson from the minor judges using Noth’s criteria is that the years during which he judged Israel appear rounded. A priori there is no reason why twenty should not express as precise a period as the twenty-three years of Tola or, for that matter, the six of Jephthah. But, even accepting that Samson’s may be a rounded figure, a formidable difficulty besets the Alt-Noth view of the verisimilitudinous quality of 1978), 760-1; J. Alberto Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testament (2nd rev. edn, trans. John Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1980), 176; idem, Judges: A Commentary (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1981), 207, but note 196-8; idem, “Das Amt,” 245; Mullen, “‘Minor Judges,’” 199, 201; John Gray, The New Century Bible Commentary: Joshua, Judges, Ruth (Basingstoke: Marshall Morgan and Scott, 1986), 192-3; Barry G. Webb, The Book of Judges: An Integrated Reading (JSOTSup 46; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 176; Timothy M. Willis, “The Nature of Jephthah’s Authority,” CBQ 59 (1997): 33-44 (33); Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth (NAC 6; Nashville: B&H, 1999), 338, 342; K. Lawson Younger Jr., Judges and Ruth (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 43. This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by The Society of Biblical Literature in The Journal of Biblical Literature, available online at https://doi.org/10.1353/jbl.2018.0003. It is not the copy of record. Copyright © 2018, Society of Biblical Literature. the five minor judges’ year attributions, namely, that, taken as a group, they total seventy, one of the most symbolically loaded numerals in the Bible and hardly “unartificial.”8 Jephthah’s exclusion from the list of minor judges on the grounds that, as the writer has deliberately compiled a group to whom he assigns a combined period in “office” of seventy years, Jephthah cannot be a member of this group, any more than Samson is, plainly presents a challenge to the prevailing view.9 Noth’s final argument for Jephthah as a minor judge is that his pericope is lodged within the sequence of minor judges. On this basis, a case can be made, as Lillian Klein proposes, for Samson’s membership of the group since his story concludes the series.10 Samson is not introduced, however, with the formula “and after X,” which is a unifying trait of the five minor judges; but, then, neither is Jephthah. Jephthah’s story does, nevertheless, end with the formula: “And after [Jephthah], Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel” (12:8).11 This evidence is not as conclusive as it may first appear: ipso facto that Samson was the final judge, no one could be said to come after him. No less troubling for the thesis is the 8 Robin Baker, Hollow Men, Strange Women: Riddles, Codes and Otherness in the Book of Judges (BINS 143; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 151. 9 In addition, the disparity between the volume of information that the writer provides on Jephthah, who spent less time as judge than any of the minor judges, and their sketchy résumés, highlights the incongruity of his membership of their group. Compare Mullen, “‘Minor Judges,’” 186 n. 5. 10 The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges (JSOTSup 68; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1988), 83. 11 Compare Hertzberg, Bücher, 209; Hauser, “‘Minor Judges,’” 193. This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by The Society of Biblical Literature in The Journal of Biblical Literature, available online at https://doi.org/10.1353/jbl.2018.0003. It is not the copy of record. Copyright © 2018, Society of Biblical Literature. existence of similar phraseology following the record of the book’s second hero figure, Ehud: “and after him was Shamgar” (3:31). Although comparative analysis reveals the weakness of each of Noth’s points, there is no escaping the fact that the number associated with Jephthah in the role – six – does not conform to those associated with the other major judges.12 This prompts the questions if Jephthah’s number is not to be interpreted in terms of the minor judge set, how is it to be understood, and what might this reveal about the author’s attitude to him? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to consider the related subject of the meaning of the numbers connected with the judge-heroes.